This week, Rachel and Chris interview Rebecca Gettings, a parent of an AAC user in Arizona. Her son, Carter, has complex communication needs and uses eye tracking. Rachel shares about her journey from learning about AAC to supporting Carter’s literacy, as well as some of her AAC and inclusion advocacy in Yuma, Arizona.

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel discuss some ways that Rachel has used AI in her practice, including using the Canva AI image creator to create visuals and characters for an original story. Rachel also shares about a client family that has negative feelings about AI, and her realization that she may need to have more conversations with families before using AI in therapy. Chris notes that AI is not “binary” - its not all bad or all good.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 When Rachel is using Chat GPT in therapy and gets an answer that is difficult for her client to understand, Rachel will model writing “Can you simplify that” into to help them get an easier to understand response.

🔑 Turnover has been a big problem for Rebecca and Carter - she frequently teaches Carter’s teachers and SLPs to be good communication partners, only for them to be replaced. When an AAC user’s family learns how to use AAC and become good communication partners, it establishes a consistent source of knowledge and expertise that won’t change as often.

🔑 Rebecca says that the main advice she would give to parents is to “get started learning as soon as possible,” even if it seems overwhelming at first. “Once you understand AAC,” she says, “its super easy, but it’s about making that jump.”

🔑 If you are training parents, don’t worry about training them on things they can search on YouTube, like how to add or remove a button. Focus on getting them comfortable with modeling and identifying activities in their daily routine that are starting points for implementation.

Link from this week’s episode:

SSA’s Spotlight on ABLE Tax Free Savings Accounts for Disabled Individuals: https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-able.html 

Inspire HI Project - https://www.facebook.com/InspireHIproject/ 

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